By Tim Redmond :48hills – excerpt
It took a year-long Chronicle investigation, a hearing called by Sup. Dean Preston, and repeated efforts by tenants in the city’s supportive housing program to convince the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to provide a policy on how and why low-income tenants can be evicted.
Most of the evictions, which are rampant, come for non-payment of rent; Preston argued in March that nobody in San Francisco today should be evicted from a city-funded SRO hotel room because they don’t have the money for rent…
On Thursday/3, the Homlessness Oversight Commission will hold a hearing on the policy, including a presentation from the tenant organizers. They want a policy that says “must,” not “should,” and that includes mandatory arbitration:…
They also want to see limits on “nuisance” evictions to actual nuisances that impact other residents (not, for example, a tenant with a messy room).
That meeting starts at 9am in City Hall Room 416..… (more)
This is a question some of us have had questions about this for a long time. Why are supportive housing and low income housing managers moving people in and out of housing? Is there a program that encourages them to move people? We are also wondering why it is so difficult to address actual problems stemming from abusive and anti-social behavior conducted against landlords, tenants and neighbors?
Many cases of this are well-documented and have been covered by the local media. We appear to have serial abusers who somehow get themselves into place. Pay the rent for a while and then quit. Some even move out of their place but leave their stuff and refuse to vacate the place after they leave, exposing the landlord and or roommates and neighbors to expensive tactics to take back their peaceful use of their homes and or property for months while they drag out the evictions process for months in hopes of being paid to leave. When and if the perpetrators ever leave the landlords will never rent again out of fear that they might get another roommate or tenant from hell.
Sadly, there will always be serial abusers. But I don’t understand how unhoused people placed in a public housing facility for them can be evicted. They didn’t have funds for housing. Is that a surprise? Income requirements? Moving people, especially families with children or the elderly, is abusive. Public agencies should not be doing this.